


i dreamt of being perfect (just for you)

by cerebella



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Established Relationship, Kid Fic, M/M, Miscommunication, Mpreg, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-02 14:07:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12728043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerebella/pseuds/cerebella
Summary: Only fools rush in, but Victor's an idiot and makes a run for it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roadhouses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roadhouses/gifts).



Victor’s heat started, conveniently, during the dinner service at one of the nicer restaurants in St. Petersburg. They had made reservations two months in advance; they had spent half the evening getting ready; they had hailed a cab to the restaurant, meaning there was no car waiting for them outside.

“Please don’t joke about things like that,” Yuuri said, when Victor kicked him under the table and started making frantic gestures behind his menu.

“…Yuuri,” Victor said, a little helplessly.

Yuuri fixed him with a look of blistering disapproval and Victor could feel himself flagging again, if only marginally.

 _Just incredible_ , Victor thought, glancing around the restaurant and running his hand through his hair with an air of anxiety. “Yuurichka," he said, closing his menu with a certain decisiveness, "take me home before I end up propositioning one of these poor waiters."

He could feel it already: a shockwave rippling through him from within, catabolizing his brain, reducing him into a thing that wanted all that Yuuri had to give.

By now everyone in the restaurant probably knew, except for Yuuri, who was narrowing his eyes at Victor over the top of his menu. Perhaps it was finally dawning on him. Victor had been fine all week, if a little handsy in the back of the cab, if a little showy and pretty and warm—but then he was always like that. There was no room for speculation now. The maître d’ was giving the two of them dirty looks.

It was a shame about the restaurant, but Victor couldn’t bring himself to care. Outside it was cool and dark, the air crisp and bracing, nothing like the heady, sultry stuff of cramped fine dining. For a moment he wanted to walk, having convinced himself it would be romantic—but then Yuuri was ushering him into the back of a cab, and Victor could feel the fleeting warmth of his hand on his lower back, and as he watched Yuuri clamber into the passenger seat, looking flustered and irritable and painfully angelic all at once, he realized there was nothing to do but wait. Here was the object of all his desires, and Victor couldn’t even be trusted to sit next to him.

And then to compound his suffering, it looked as though the cab driver had gotten them lost, or misunderstood whatever directions Yuuri had given him. They had pulled up on a street Victor only faintly recognised, and to his right was the grand entrance to an opulent hotel.

“This was closer,” Yuuri said by way of explanation, once the two of them were alone in the elevator.

“How did you even get a room so fast?” Victor stared at him, bewildered.

“I don’t know,” Yuuri admitted, looking sheepish, “but I think—as soon as they saw you…”

Which was maddening, and sent Victor into a sulk that lasted, astonishingly, right up until Yuuri crawled between his legs, tie loosened and sleeves rolled up, blushing only moments before the ravaging, like that sweet, shy creature Victor had found hiding in Hasetsu so many years ago.

In the mirror on the wall, Victor saw a sinful glimpse of the two of them and thought, rather tartly, that if his any of his dignified, sedate cousins could see him now—a shivering, sweat-soaked mess in the flush of heat, spreading his legs before an Olympic gold medallist and one of the most beautiful men in the world—they would grimace and think he was boringly predictable.

“—Victor,” Yuuri said softly, breaking him out of his thoughts. He’d paused in the middle of unbuttoning his shirt. In the dusky, warm light of their hotel room he looked like a dream, an earth-treading angel, and Victor forgot all over again why he had ever wanted to share him with anyone.

“Back at the restaurant,” Victor blurted, planting his hand on Yuuri’s chest as Yuuri was leaning down to kiss him, “this whole time—did you really not want me at all?”

“I always want you,” Yuuri mumbled, his face suffused with rose. “I’m just used to it.”

Victor stared at him. He didn’t quite understand how that worked. “But couldn’t you tell that I wanted you too?”

Yuuri dragged his fingertips up and along Victor’s inseam, watching him closely beneath his lashes. “I’m used to that, too.”

“…Oh,” Victor said. There was nothing to say to that.

So Yuuri leaned down to kiss him once more, and this time Victor closed his eyes and sighed. Feeling reverent, he curled his fingers in Yuuri’s hair. For all he knew the world had already melted around them—but here was something to hold onto in the meantime.

 

*

 

On the morning of their fourth day stuck in a hotel room, Victor awoke to the sound of polite knocking at the door. He squinted: his suit was folded neatly on a chair in the corner of the room. He could hear the shower running, which explained why he was alone in bed. And for the first time in days, he felt collected again.

“Did you order room service?” he called, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

A moment later, Yuuri emerged in a whorl of steam and droplets of water, holding a towel in place around his waist and looking harried.

“You’re dripping all over the floor,” Victor told him. Then he decided he didn’t care. “You can answer the door, I’m tired.”

“I’m not decent,” Yuuri said, looking agitated, but he was already pinning his wet hair away from his forehead, preening as if he were about to meet with someone he wanted to impress.

“It’s _room service_ ,” Victor reminded him, feeling resentful.

In these last few hours he’d come down, and his heat had gone benign again, though traces of fervor lingered like glitter in places he didn’t expect. Their hotel room stank of something sickly sweet—like flat cherry soda, or cough syrup—and Victor was beginning to realize all over again that he had needs that didn’t involve being in bed with his fiancé.

Like food. He remembered now. Some of it was okay.

“What did you order?” He crept to the edge of the bed, hindered somewhat by the sheets tangled around his legs. For a moment he wondered if whoever had come to the door had glanced over Yuuri’s shoulder and seen Victor lounging in bed with his hair sticking out in all directions, looking like the victim of a baby shark attack. But then who could tear their eyes from Yuuri? Up close he looked nothing short of a wet dream: he was still dewy from the shower, his eyelashes dark and wet, with only a scant towel to protect his modesty.

“—giving me that look,” muttered Yuuri, shutting the door behind him and bringing plates over.

“What?”

“Nothing. Forget it. Are you hungry? Sit up.”

Victor hesitated for a moment, taking in the look on Yuuri’s face. He had an inkling that Yuuri was in some sort of strange mood, though he couldn’t for the life of him say why. But he obliged anyway, because Yuuri was blowing on a spoonful of curry, and then holding it out for Victor, looking expectant. Sometimes Victor thought the poor thing was blindsided by having two different sets of instincts vying for output.

Later, when Yuuri had left Victor in the bathtub with a full glass of wine and _The Godfather_ playing on a propped-up phone screen halfway across the bathroom, Yuuri came back to tell him that they would have to check out by six or else Makkachin would be left all alone in the flat.

This was all well and good, but Victor was only half-listening, still watching intently as Jack Woltz bemoaned Fontane’s olive oil voice and mourned for his runaway darling.

“What would you do if I ran away with Johnny Fontane?” he asked.

“Wait for you to come running back,” Yuuri deadpanned, sitting down on the edge of the tub to pile bubbles on top of Victor’s head. “I know everyone thinks I stole you. But you came to me and I couldn’t get rid of you.”

Victor fixed his fiancé with a _look_. “You barged in on me while I was bathing, you dirty old man,” Victor told him. “Tcha. You’ve gotten so rude. I liked it better when you cried on national television.”

Yuuri regarded him for a moment, then leaned down to kiss him, dragging his nails against Victor’s scalp, wet and slow and filthy. Briefly the water was warm again. Briefly Victor could feel that same lurid wound reopening—but before he could pull Yuuri down into the water like some dark-eyed sea nymph and have his way with him, Yuuri pulled away and walked back out into the bedroom without a word.

Victor stared after him, dumbfounded.

So Yuuri was still in a mood—and it was, by every stretch of the imagination, Victor’s fault.

 

*

 

For whatever reason it was in Yuuri’s nature to leave a problem alone until it metastasized, which made it far too easy to forget when they _did_ have a problem, particularly when in the meantime Victor was still getting away with holding his ring up to the light and telling his fiancé, “You don’t expect me to settle for this, do you?”

“What?” Yuuri blurted. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t even ask me about it,” Victor said ruefully. “I wish we’d done it differently.”

When he finally tore his eyes away from his ring, he could see Yuuri was already flushed pink, holding a hand to his heart and bracing himself against the kitchen countertop.

“You know I mean the _ring_ , darling.”

Yuuri fixed him with a severe look. “What’s wrong with your ring?”

Of course Victor loved the ring; there was nothing more precious to him in the whole wide world. But didn’t Yuuri know that he was supposed to carry it around with him in his pocket for months, and wait for the right moment to strike? Didn’t Yuuri know that Victor came from _vieux riches_ , that there was an epidemic of engagement rings scattered uselessly around their apartment? They were all priceless family heirlooms, no doubt. He’d probably vacuumed up one or two by accident. Godforsaken things.

But he said none of this. Instead he dragged his hand down his face and muttered scornfully, “ _Snowflakes_. What were you thinking?”

By now Yuuri seemed to have recovered from his initial panic, although he still looked distinctly unimpressed. “You poor thing,” he said flatly.

“Mmm,” Victor hummed in assent. In a heartbeat Yuuri had stridden across the room and sat himself down on Victor’s legs. He took Victor’s bejeweled hand in his and inspected it closely.

“Hopefully you won’t have to wear it for much longer,” Yuuri said quietly, curling his fingers securely around Victor’s wrist.

For one heartstopping second Victor could not parse his meaning. And then in a flood of warmth, he understood. It was shameful, the way he softened. As demure as he’d been at first blush.

One of these days he ought to write to Nyanya Lyuba and mention in passing that he had somehow ended up engaged, and let that small detail get funnelled back to his poor mother, who for all Victor knew had loped off again on one of her vain attempts to restore her delicate health—only he suspected it might kill her. To think that someone would deign to marry her wretched Vitka. His mother probably thought he’d flown to Japan on a whim and picked Yuuri up off the side of the road, having taken a brief interest in him the way he would a funny-shaped rock.

Which bore some resemblance to the truth, except that Yuuri was lovelier than any rock—so lovely, in fact, that Victor was going to marry him, in spite of his mother’s heart condition, and in spite of his lifelong premonition that anyone who married him would end up putting a hit out on him for the inheritance money.

“You know,” Yuuri murmured, ignoring the gloomy look on Victor’s face, “I forgot earlier, but back at the hotel, we didn’t have anything…”

Victor blinked at him, drowsy and slow, the same way a cat would broadcast a kiss. “I’m not on anything,” he confessed, although of course Yuuri knew this by now.

There was a spark in the air, something sweet and new. Suddenly Victor had a million questions—did they live near any good schools? Did Yuuri have girls’ names in mind? What were property prices like in Hasetsu? Which language should come first?

But the faraway look on Yuuri’s face wasn’t hopeful. He shifted restlessly, propping himself up on his elbows. “What’s on your mind?” he asked, tentative. How long had it been now, since that fragrant evening in Barcelona? A year at least, surely. By now they could’ve celebrated their first anniversary. By now they could have—

“Nothing,” Yuuri said. “I’ll pick something up at the pharmacy.”

Victor gave him a weak smile. There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t be blindingly obvious. He felt suddenly weary, as if he had just woken up from a thousand-year slumber. It was hormones, nothing more—he was always like this after his heat, always unsettled, uneasy, wanting something more.

He let the moment pass. Neither of them ended up saying anything else.

“You should go. Your mother’s expecting a call from me,” Victor told him, shuffling off of the sofa. If nothing else, he wanted to be alone for a little while. “I’ll see you later tonight.”

 

*

 

There was no way Victor was going to call Yuuri’s mother. It was past midnight in Japan, and Hiroko was expecting no such call.

But he had changed his mind about being alone. It didn’t matter who—a total stranger would have sufficed—but he wanted to talk to someone.

“Maybe your husband,” Chris said dryly, once he’d picked up and heard Victor pining away.

“I don’t have a husband,” Victor grumbled. “I’ve had a fiancé for as long as I can remember. Do you know we haven’t even started the wedding planning? You would think he was waiting for something.”

“Waiting for you to ask about children so he can be sure about marrying you.”

“Most people are sure about marrying someone _before_ they propose,” Victor argued, although with Yuuri this was somehow a contentious point. His idea of a proposal had honestly unnerved Victor so much that for several weeks afterwards he’d had strange dreams about it.

“Where is he, anyway? Don’t tell me he can hear you talking like this.”

“I sent him off to go buy a morning after pill for me—” On the other end of the line, Chris made a noise of long-suffering “—Oh god, I know, it’s terrible, all of it. I don’t suppose I could just tell him I’m allergic.”

There was silence on Chris’ end.

Maybe he was being ridiculous, Victor thought. Maybe it didn’t seem like he’d thought it through. Nobody was taking him seriously.

“Do you really want this?” Chris asked him, sounding all of a sudden apprehensive. “Honestly. I would have never guessed.”

Victor swallowed. “I can’t stop thinking about it now. And I don’t think it’s going to go away.”

He took a deep breath. This was getting him nowhere. Surely, he thought, surely Yuuri had thought about it too—he’d come from a happy family, grown up in an idyllic town by the sea, surrounded by that special brand of adoration only darling little boys were privy to. All milk and honey. Nothing could have been easier. With Victor it had been much of the same, only enhanced by wealth and politesse: his parents had paid for his voice lessons and his dance classes, endured his brief tryst with tennis and his lifelong affair with skating, and they’d sat in the front row at all his darling, shaky ballet recitals, and the school plays in which he was the star (which was to say, all of them). He’d had tutors, coaches, loathsome admirers. He’d had his _nyanya_.

He knew also, without having to ask, that Yuuri had known none of this—that it would’ve been so far beyond his reach that it would’ve been shameful to even ask. But being a perennial starlet Victor managed to be envious of just about anything, and in his daydreaming about little Yuuri’s life he wondered secretly if they would’ve liked each other—or if young Vitya, being a brat, would have found little Yuurichka’s wide-eyed admiration to be hideously unbecoming. Or if he’d have made little Yuurichka follow him around, preying on him for flattery and deification. Or maybe—and this was the worst thought Victor’s imagination could conceive—little Yuuri would’ve not cared for him, or his lucre, or his puppy.

He was getting distracted now, but the point still stood: any child they had between them would live their little life in the rays of the sun.

“I don’t know why you’re keeping this a secret from him. He’s never going to leave you,” Chris reiterated. “Just get on top of him and tell him exactly what you want.”

Victor wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know why I thought you’d be helpful.”

“You have to have other friends. Who do you call when Yuuri’s not there?”

Victor considered it for a moment. “…Yuuri’s mama?”

“I’m hanging up,” Chris decided. “I need a drink. You’re upsetting me on purpose.”

 _I used to be worse, if you can believe it_ , Victor was tempted to say—as if this somehow made it better.

He hung up the call before Chris had the chance. Yuuri would be back soon anyway; Victor wanted to be asleep when he came home.


	2. Chapter 2

It was winter in Russia, which meant in the morning one could always just about make out the forsaken cries of some lonely, wretched creature in the streets, vying for love and warmth and tender care—for some reason strays like to hobble towards Victor in particular, looking outrageously helpless, spawned from God-knows-where; what a distressing time. As if the darkness and the freezing cold weren’t terrible enough, Victor was being manipulated daily by every God damn orphan kitten in St. Petersburg. Supposedly there was something about his scent that guaranteed at least a kiss, or a scrap of meat, or a very fashionable scarf.

And lately it had gotten even worse, though Victor couldn’t think why. A symptom of his post-heat, maybe. More often than not he was coming home with cats hidden in the pockets of his huge Burberry coats, attracting the local wildlife like a very burly, very frustrated Snow White.

“Victor Alexandrovich Nikiforov,” Yuuri would say, in that _voice_ , with that _look_ on his face. Hands on hips, wielding a spatula.

“My only love,” Victor would greet. Bedroom eyes, swooning a little.

“You don’t know where that’s been.”

“…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re taking it to the shelter first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Who? _Koshka?_ She’s perfectly lovely. Really, you’ll like her. Come say hello.”

And so on and so forth. This would happen maybe twice a week—Makkachin was getting old, but after a decade early morning walks had become a hard habit to break. At some point Yuuri was just going to stop letting Victor leave the house altogether. At some point Victor was going to begin his life as a wine-sweet prisoner, living off nectar and ambrosia, bathing in milk, sleeping twelve hours a day, etc, etc. By then he would have forgotten all about the poor _kotyata_ living in the streets; Yuuri would make him forget.

This morning though, no such creatures leapt out at Victor on his morning walk. Yuuri had been asleep when he’d left. He was still sleeping when Victor came home, feline-free, all lonely and unloved. He was bed-drowsy and irritable when Victor crawled on top of him, tetchy when Victor sighed loudly in his ear. His face was blotchy from sinking into a pillow for ten hours, and he was drooling.

“Wow,” Victor said, mere particles away from Yuuri’s face.

“Buh,” said Yuuri, blinking his eyes open. His expression was airy, lost, hazy. When he finally found focus, he blew softly in Victor’s face. Pure insouciance. He would torment Victor until the end of time.

Victor raised his eyebrows. “Pardon me.”

Yuuri flashed him a coy look. Faint mockery. Then, sounding all of a sudden incensed, he shrieked, “Are you wearing _shoes_? Victor! Off! Get off—!”

 

*

 

There was a silent auction that evening, part of a gala, taking place in the heart of the city—Victor had spent the last two hours laying out outfits on the bed, carefully weighing neckties and inspecting cufflinks while Yuuri sat on the bed in a fluffy bathrobe, studying the LINE stickers his mother had texted him today.

“Don’t touch your face,” Victor said absently, as Yuuri lifted his hand to rub at his eyes. “You’ll ruin your makeup.”

Yuuri turned around just to give him a bored look, which Victor pointedly ignored. Yuuri’s makeup was just about all that Victor had accomplished in the last few hours, and that hardly counted because Yuuri barely wore any. Victor still had a face mask on. “You should start getting dressed,” he told Yuuri. “I want you—” he pointed “—in this one, here. You’re going to look alarming.”

Yuuri scrunched up his nose. “I don’t want to look alarming.”

“Alarmingly _beautiful_ , darling,” Victor said emphatically. “Alarmingly _stunning_.”

Would he even know anyone at the gala tonight? It wasn’t likely. He’d been invited by some distant cousin. Probably he’d spend most of the evening twined around Yuuri’s elbow, showing him off to strangers.

Also—and this had seemed peripheral up until now—there was a strange pit feeling growing in his gut. The world seemed to wobble beneath his feet. Victor frowned. Something in the apartment reeked of—gasoline, was it?

 _Oh God_ , he thought as he spun on his heel and marched into bathroom, saliva flooding his mouth. He gagged once, twice over the toilet bowl—but nothing came, save for thick threads of spit. Slowly but surely the urgency faded, and he was left hunched over the toilet, wiping at his mouth and shuddering. For a moment he considered forcing something up—he had osmosed, years ago, that useful, disgusting trick of prying at the pharynx with two artless fingers—to try and make the poisonous sensation pass. But then he felt too hot and slow and drugged to do anything besides stand there, bracing himself with his hands on knees. Yuuri had come in and put a hand on his shoulder, and was speaking softly to him, but every word ran like egg yolk, too faint to be made out over the sickly thrum in Victor’s head.

This was fine, Victor told himself. Typical Russian tachycardia and nothing more. He drew himself up to full, magnificent height, glancing around as Yuuri gripped him on either side to steady him.

“Are you alright?” Yuuri asked, with an openly afraid look. He was standing close enough that there was a hint in the air of his cologne, a fragrant cloud about his lovely head.

“Yes, yes, I…don’t know what that was. Do I look alright?”

“Of course,” Yuuri said, brows knitted. Gingerly, he tucked some stray hair behind Victor’s ear. “You look handsome.”

“Useless sap,” Victor said, sounding fond, then leaned down to kiss the dirty look off Yuurichka’s face. A surprised noise, and then Yuuri was pulling away, looking scandalized and exasperated and completely darling. Victor looked in the mirror at the two of them: Yuuri had gotten half-dressed in the meantime, and was standing there, looking resentful in his dress shirt (still unbuttoned, God bless) and briefs. His tie was rogue, draped over his shoulders, waiting patiently for Victor’s attention. He was wearing calf socks again, the tease.

“You’re not wearing garters for those?” Victor asked nonchalantly, half-expecting Yuuri to flick his ear.

“No,” Yuuri said flatly. “You pervert.”

“I’m only thinking ahead,” Victor told him, round-eyed and innocent, laying a placating palm on Yuuri’s bare chest. Speaking of which—he had only just noticed the Plan B carton sitting on the bathroom counter, left there last night (presumably) by his loving fiancé. He hiccupped: he’d forgotten all about that debacle.

Yuuri might have followed his gaze, wondering at the abrupt shift in Victor’s expression. But who could say. When Victor stepped past him back out into the bedroom, it was with an inconsolable tremor, like a little Bambi. He distracted himself with clean, starchy shirts and dark, silken neckties, the absolute task of French cuffs, the question of which cuff links should adorn him—all while desperately trying to ignore the way Yuuri’s watchful gaze trailed after him.

 

*

 

Yuuri had argued against coming in the first place, citing that if Victor wasn’t feeling well he ought to stay home and rest, but then Victor had cried, “Where in God’s name is the fun in that?” and pushed past Yuuri—who decided sullenly that if Victor was to go amusing himself amongst oligarchs and fine wines, second-rate movie stars and plutocrats, he certainly wasn’t going without any supervision.

Anyway, that plan soon fell to pieces. Victor was still regarded chastely as Russia’s darling, and so even if he knew nobody at the gala, there was always someone around who knew him. He caught the eye like a knee-high child wandering alone in a strange place. People all around him liked to tuck him under their wing and tend to him until his fiancé could be found amongst the seas of chiffon and silk—though one eventually got the impression that he strayed from his keeper purely because he enjoyed being returned to him so much.

“You’re awfully pale tonight, Victor,” he was told, by no other than Lt. Romano, whose appearance at sixty-eight was heavy, slow, powerful—a good guardian angel to have.

“I’m always pale,” Victor said, sounding flip. “Otherwise nobody would publish me.”

“Are you not being whisked away constantly then?”

Victor shook his head. “I’m more at home, these days.”

“Right.”

“In bed, mostly,” Victor added, feeling very pleased with himself. In the corner of his eye he glimpsed Romano looking up at God and shaking his head almost imperceptibly. “Don’t make that face!” he exclaimed, through laughter. “I’m still young!”

“Being young leads to getting old,” Romano said frankly, with still a glint of mirth in his eye. Victor pursed his lips and nodded sympathetically, though the sports doctors that’d brooded him all his life had let him make no mistake: what made one old was a) oxidative stress, and b) pratting about during physio, Vitya, you godless boy, sit still for heaven’s sake. “You should drink less. Here, give that glass to me.”

“Euh. You’re right. Do you know how much weight I’ve gained since I retired?” Victor handed it over and afterwards wrapped his arms around himself self-consciously. Even now his trousers were uncomfortably snug. “I’m terrified my couturier’s going to leave me.”

“But not your fiancé.”

“My fiancé!” Victor sang with laughter. “God, no. Yuuri doesn’t care at all.”

“Yuuri doesn’t care about what?” asked Yuuri, who had materialized at Victor’s side, a maraschino cherry sitting blithely in his cheek. He looked sweet and untroubled. He looked sweeter still when Victor slid a proprietary hand around his waist. “Hi,” he said belatedly, to Romano, leaning shyly into Victor’s side. Yuuri stood there in his soft, rumpled suit and his champagne blush, swaying on his feet, sipping absently at his nth mimosa of the night. It was impossible to bear, all of it. In the muted distance Victor heard Romano murmur his blessing and _arrivederci_ , and then Victor was curling himself about Yuurichka and purring, coveting him in the deep, blue dark.

“He left,” Yuuri said plaintively. His head smelled like a tangerine. He sounded like he would soon begin to cry. “He didn’t want to talk to me…”

Victor leaned down to kiss his temple. “He left so I could be alone with you.”

“What were you talking about?” Yuuri asked again, letting Victor drag him by the wrist to the dancefloor. The low light of the ballroom made him all the more impossible to read, all the more lovely and blue, and he seemed reluctant to go anywhere but allowed himself to be embraced, as it were, among a pour of gentle strangers.

“Nothing,” Victor said, arranging the two of them, stepping back when Yuuri stepped forward, in heady, dreamy motion. “I told him you’d never leave me—”

“Yeah,” Yuuri said. He was beginning to slur. As if there were something stuck on the tip of his tongue.

“—even if I got baby fat,” Victor said, and Yuuri stumbled out of time; his hand slid down to Victor’s hip to steady himself. Victor swallowed. “But if it does bother you, you only have to say the word.”

Victor paused.

“I’d starve, you know. I want to be beautiful for you,” he murmured. “But you don’t care, do you.”

Yuuri lay his head against Victor’s chest. He made a serene ‘ _mmpf_ ’ sound, in the way that dreamy boys, who are angels of mass destruction, _mmpf_.

 

*

 

Strange, but Victor realised rather late that Yuuri hadn’t thought he was being serious. About the baby fat, and about getting rid of it.

But he’d spent twenty years of his life ravaged by diets. What was twenty more? What was fifty, if it was for his poor darling? The only problem was it would take years off his life, and that seemed counterintuitive. Yuuri would have no protectors if Victor were to go before him—and he almost certainly would—so he would have to find Yuuri a guardian angel of his own before then. Someone lovely and long-lasting.

He was certain he knew someone who, in good time, would be perfect for it, but couldn’t quite conjure up a name.

 

*

 

“You scoundrel,” Victor hissed. “You _lied_ to me. You lied to your fiancé!”

“What are you talking about?” Yuuri grumbled, fumbling for the light switch, yelping when Victor wrapped his arms around his waist and hauled him, without much ceremony, over to the couch. “Why are you so— _hey!_ Get away from there…”

“Hah,” Victor said, looking self-satisfied. In his grip he held Yuuri’s ankle aloft, pants rolled up his calf, blatantly exposing the strappy garter fastened to his sock. “Well?” he said, looking down at Yuuri with his eyebrows raised. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“You’re a lunatic.”

“No, I’m a pervert,” Victor said, rolling his eyes, and then, in a completely unsurprising turn of events, bent down to fondly kiss his fiancé’s calf. He ignored the scathing libel Yuuri came out with post-haste. Really Victor had very wholesome hang-ups. He cried during sex; he said _mwah_ when he kissed. He sometimes gazed wetly into someone’s eyes for a full minute after he’d come, which was hardly in vogue, but good friends usually made the necessary allowances.

Yuuri yawned. Earlier he hadn’t managed to actually turn the lights on—of course, Victor had intercepted him—and their apartment was still dark, only faintly lit up by a desk lamp on the far side of the room. In the dull, saffron light, composed not unlike a Caravaggio, Yuuri lay sprawled out carelessly on the couch, abominably desirable, peering down at him with heavy-lidded eyes. His boutonnière—which Victor had put together so devotedly, like any loving wife—had been crushed at the battle at the door. His hair was doing that thing where little grass blades of it would stick out at endearing angles. His tie was…nowhere to be seen. One had to assume it was gone forever. Yuuri had really had an awful lot to drink.

“Do you know, sometimes I worry,” Victor said, crawling towards him, “that you’re prettier than me.”

“I’m not,” Yuuri said, sotto voce. His eyes fluttered shut as Victor settled on top of him. The corner of his mouth twitched when Victor rested his head on Yuuri’s chest. “Victor,” he mumbled, sounding puzzled, “why do you…smell like…”

Victor waited for him to say ‘my cologne.’

“Like you’re with…someone…”

“What,” Victor blurted. Abruptly he propped himself up on his elbows. “You mean like—?”

But Yuuri had passed out. For heaven’s sake. _Timing._ Victor stared down at him through narrowed eyes and bit his lip hard. If he said anything at all now, it was bound to come out in a teary fit. Victor would have to freeze him out in the morning.

Moving off the couch was strenuous, like struggling against a current, and he swore out loud when, stumbling in the dark, he banged his knee on the glass edge of a coffee table. Standing in the doorway, he glanced back one last time at Yuuri, at his milky, innocent visage, then locked the bedroom door behind him.

The lights were still on in the bathroom. Victor shed his suit and tie, everything sliding easily to the floor except his trousers—which, embarrassingly, he had to wrestle down his hips and thighs, where before they’d slipped off just so—and then staggered into the bathroom in his briefs, wincing at his reflection in the fluorescent lighting. He ignored the weighing scales. He picked up the plan B carton sitting on the bathroom counter, not knowing for certain whether he was at the end of the five-day stretch or not, let the pill melt in his palm for a moment or two, and then swallowed it molten. It would have felt like stealing, somehow, if he hadn’t. A strange feeling of calm washed over him as he stepped into the shower to rinse off the day, the sweat, the sebum and the cologne.

In bed he felt all alone, cool and quiet, his wet hair soaking a pillow. It didn’t feel as though he would be falling asleep anytime soon. He realized too late that he had locked out Makkachin as well as Yuuri.

Lucid moonlight poured out onto the floor.

The clock ticked.

…How long was this supposed to take? All the resisting, all the thoughtful looks, all the quiet, painful fantasies—what was he waiting so patiently for? For Yuuri to have a vision, maybe, of a sweet, stumbling child of his own. By now Victor’s blooming infatuation was an elaborate dream, one he was scaffolding in reality. A week or so ago he’d caught himself carefully inspecting prenatal vitamins at the chemist. It’d made him feel guilty. There was even a little canister of folic acid in their kitchen now; Yuuri probably assumed it was a supplement like any other.

But Victor had been faithful, in every sense of the word: if Yuuri didn’t want a child, then here was Victor, lying awake in bed at night, aching and repentant. He certainly wasn’t ‘with anyone.’ He paled at the thought. Tomorrow he would have ulcers.

See, he had asked for nothing. And he had gotten nothing. That was fine. He could go on wanting, dreaming his life away, always on the brink of falling to his knees and pleading. The headache was this: what if he finally broke, and Yuuri said _no?_ Then where would they be? Alone with each other in Hell. For the rest of his life, there would be a part of him that resented his own husband, that longed for something held purposefully out of reach.

One couldn’t pluck a flower without troubling a star. So Victor would have to wait and see. He liked the flower, but loved the star.


End file.
